A couple weeks later they were installing a low balance beam in the back yard and Roman stared the thing down like a dragon to be conquered. It was such a transformation that they went out of their way to encourage, to bandage and ice, to show up at competitions and pay for private lessons when Roman wailed that he wasn't the best in his class and that Miss Roo said his feet were ugly. It wasn't a transformation so much as a marvel to see their little boy focus all of his wild energy into something that gave him so much joy and encouraged the growth of the native squirrel population rather than hindered it. After two years worth of car trips to other counties, of Mary learning to prepare protein rich foods that could still be shaped into dinosaurs, of Alexander installing mats and training bars in their den, of over-the-moon highs and wailing lows Miss Roo pulled his parents aside and said her work had been done. She referred the Graysons to a school of gymnastics in the city and at ten years old Roman furrowed his brow and told himself that he was a professional. Mary laughed at how surly he looked, Alexander's chest swelled with pride.

It was their second week in the city when the Graysons were robbed at gunpoint. Roman watched helplessly as his father put himself between the man and the gun, and himself and his mother. Even though their pockets had been emptied, the kid demanded Mary's wedding ring through a stock of white-blonde hair and darting eyes and Roman always knew that it was her hesitation that got them shot. He shot them one after the other, their bodies falling one after the other, in a neat and clean row. His mother died there, and he and his father were taken to the hospital where his father never woke up and Roman sorely wished he hadn't either. It took him years to recover, and to this day Roman would always use that term loosely rather than a definite.

Nothing was the same when he left the hospital. Without any family in the area he was assigned a guardian, Miss Roo's daughter, Margaret Roo(ney). She moved into the formerly happy Grayson home with her little girl after Roman kept sneaking away from theirs to sleep in his parents bed, creating a sad cocoon of their boxed up belongings around him. The blades of grass he used to chew and roll through were now sinister things creeping up to get him at night. The rows of half-finished homes became hulking skeletons, spidery giant fingers reaching up from hell to take him down. Worst of all, his body wasn't his anymore. The bullet had tore through him, hollowing his chest and no amount of healing could make him move the way he did before. He couldn't bend, he couldn't tuck. If he pressed his palm against the new skin growing there his hand bent, as if there was a hole where his heart was once full and happy.

"We don't do gymnastics here," it was this curt and punctuated French that picked him up and put him back on his shaking doe legs. Not knowing what to do with a fading, despondent little boy Margaret sent him to a school in England, the English National Ballet School and Roman was livid. He didn't have control of his life, nor his body. The first year there he spent hovering between angry depression and constant brawling. At twelve his knuckles were hard but his muscles were not, and he was facing expulsion which would have happened sooner if he hadn't been so very bad at fighting. It was one of the benefactors of the school that took Roman under his wing. This man had come to the world of ballet under a similar burden and with a heavy hand he helped Roman find his passion and joy. They spent a lot of time rebuilding one another and after only a few years the airy, spirited boy found his wings again. He was awarded the Ninette de Valois Bursary became a finalist in the 9th New York International Competition and went on to win the Youth America Grand Prix that same year, where he received a scholarship to attend any school he'd like. He choose, of course, Boston Ballet. After working his way from their school into Boston's Company, he became a soloist and finally, he's currently a principle dancer and someone that he hopes would make his parents proud.